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Saturday, November 29, 2014

They say that if you are going to commit a crime, you should commit a big one, like the Savings and Loan scandal, or the Wall Street Credit default swap debacle, or in the case of former Egyptian President Mubarak, perhaps, loot a country for a generation. In the run up to the verdict, the main response of Egyptians was a big yawn.

The Washington Post reported that the "trial of the century" for Egypt has largely dropped from people's attention, partly because of its length, and partly because of the massive protests that began in June 2013, during the retrial. After the protests against the domination of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood that brought to his ouster, TV and newspaper dropped their criticism of Mubarak's old regime and shifted the blame for the violence on Islamists and foreign conspirators. Issandr al-Amrani, North Africa Project Director at International Crisis Group declared that "there's been a steady narrative to say 2011 wasn't a real revolution, the real revolution was June 30, 2013". (Mubarak verdict due, but Egyptians' interest wanesby Associated Pess,The Washington Post, November 27, 2014)

But Mubarak got off in any event. The New York Times reported today that

" An Egyptian court dropped all remaining charges against former President Hosni Mubarak on Saturday, raising the possibility that he could go free for the first time since being removed from office in the 2011 uprising that defined the Arab Spring revolt."(Kirkpatrick and Thomas, 11.29.2014 NYT)

Most bizarrely, Mubarak was acquitted of corruption charges, which seemed to be a slam dunk. It makes one wonder. Here are two reasons why. First, the judiciary is widely rumored to be full of "feloul" Mubarak allies. Second, the government is currently run by a new military-backed strongman, President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi. Mubarak is from the military, so it is no surprise that they are taking care of business.

This verdict seems to bode well for another not-very-well liked Egyptian President, Mohamed Morsi.

A committee was appointed by Egypt's interim
president Adly Mansour to investigate the violence after Morsi's ouster. The
committee will present a final report divided into five parts, and it will
cover 11 files. The most important part, entitled "Gatherings and sit-ins
in public squares and roads in Egypt," will document events in support of
Morsi during which several supporters were killed. Marawan announced: "The
report will give a complete list of the names of the victims from the
dispersals and where and how they were killed". He also announced that
"the report tried to be as neutral as possible". (

Given the Mubarak verdict, one can expect that impunity will be the order of the day, although you never know.

Women may have been a major beneficiary of the Arab Spring, along with some release of restrictions on the press. In Egypt, more
than 90 percent of women are estimated to have undergone female genital mutilation
(FGM), although the practice, also known as "circumcision", has been
penalized in 2008. Some still still consider whether to circumcise their daughters or not, because
without it she could be "sexually voracious", and this could be
"dangerous for her". The tradition is practiced because "it is
seen as needed for cleanliness or to prevent a girl's sexual desire from
running out of control". In fact, a widely used Egyptian Arabic term for
it translates as "purification". In southern Egypt, Manal Fawzy runs
the Assiut Childhood and Development Organization, a UNICEF partner
organization that "takes a community approach to getting people to abandon
the practice". She and her colleagues go from village to village to talk
to the residents, but also to religious leaders and doctors, encouraging the
latters and the families to speak publically about their rejection of the
tradition. (Egypt making slow progress on genital mutilation by Associated Press, The Washington Post, November 25, 2014)

Many thanks to my fabulous GA, Paola Cavallari, for doing much of the research that helps me stay on top of things.

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

In a 188-page report entitled
"All According to Plan: The Rab'a Massacre and Mass Killings of Protesters
in Egypt", Human Rights Watch has accused the Egyptian police and army of
crimes against humanity committed during at least 6 demonstrations between July
5 and August 17, 2014. The report is the result of interviews to more than two
hundred witnesses, visits to the protest sites right after the attacks, and
reviews of physical evidence, video footages, and statements by public
officials. In particular, Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights
Watch, has declared that the Rab'a massacre of August 14, 2013, "was a violent crackdown
planned at the highest level of the Egyptian government." Egyptian
officials have tried to justify the massacre by claiming that the civilians
were armed. Human Rights Watch documented the throwing of rocks and Molotov
cocktails against the army forces, but it affirmed that the killing was disproportionate. In about 12 hours, 817 people were
killed in what is considered "the biggest mass killing of civilians in
modern Egyptian history." Moreover, the Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim
declared that his forces found only 15 guns in the square. This massacre was not "the result of poor
training or unexpected circumstances", but it had been premeditated because
"the violent dispersal of the sit-in was thoroughly planned in
advance".

The main question surrounding the events in Rab'a is: "How
do we explain the behavior of the Egyptian military on Tahrir in January 2011
and in Rab'a in 2013?" On one hand, in January 2011, the military at first
stood by Mubarak, killing hundreds of people during the uprising. Then, a week
into the rebellion, the army declared its refusal to raise its weapons against
civilian protesters. On the other end, during the Rab'a massacre, the army
coordinated closely with the Ministry of Defense, locking any possible way out
of the Rab'a's square where people were gathered, using snipers to shoot on the
crowd and bulldozers to clear the path for the gunmen. The operation was
overseen by President al-Sisi, at the time "minister of defense, general
commander of the armed forces, chair of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces
(SCAF) and deputy prime minister for security affairs".

Scholars have been
studying and developing theories to explain these two different behaviors of
the military forces, but it is hard to reach a conclusion examining one single
regime crisis. "Future research [...] would do well to account for both"
events. Finally, since those
events took place, Egyptian authorities have engaged in several other measures
to deprive citizens and political opponents of their basic human rights. No one
has been held responsible for the massacres, although the government has
created a committee to investigate the human right abuses since June 30, 2014.
Human Rights Watch has asked the government to provide its perspective
on the events, but it has not received any response yet. One year after the Rab'a
massacre, not one of the officials who perpetrated the
massacre has been held accountable for it.

Other issues regarding democratization

On a different note, in July 2014 the Egypt's
regime announced the reduction of fuel subsidies. Although the announcement
generated waves of anger among the poor, many of whom are still suffering from the turmoil
undergoing in the nation since January 2011, the next day the lines at the gas
station across the country seemed as normal as ever. After several weeks, gas
stations recorded a shift in the preference of private drivers from the 92
unleaded gasoline to the 80 gasoline, the cheap one, and to natural gas. One
reason for the lack of uprisings was the deployment of riot police at several
gas stations and around main arteries of Cairo. Another reason is that many
decided not to protest because they estimated the cost of an uprising to be
higher than heeding the government's decisions, while wealthier citizens
consider inflation a natural phenomenon, and thus see no reason to protest
against it. A third reason is the intervention operated by the military to open
three main traffic intersections, relieving the traffic jams suffered by the
eastern part of Cairo. This operation had two main consequences: it increased
the value of real estate in those areas, and it had positive effects on public
transportation and taxi services, since the drivers don't have to take massive
detours anymore, increasing their income. Finally, according to Hatem Zayed, an
economic researcher, people accepted the recent economic measures because of
the fear generated by the outcomes of recent protests, and because of how
gradually inflation is happening. However, although President al-Sisi keeps
promising mitigation policies, he is just maneuvering around the economy.
Therefore, '"it's only a matter of time before people start protesting the
economic distress; it is inevitable"'.

Additionally, the Ministry of Interior has
launched a government project aimed to relocate street vendors from downtown
Cairo to Al-Torgoman. The project has the purpose of enforcing the sovereignty
of the law in Egyptian streets, as well as to deal with traffic congestion,
electicity theft, and violation of public property, as declared by Major
General Abdel-Tawab. Street vendors have been protesting against the measure,
stating that Al-Torgoman is a non-commercial area, and that they foresee huge
material losses. Hussien, head of the street vendors syndicate, affirmed that
the measure took them by surprise, and that they are willing to prove that the
new location is non-commercial. They will sell their products in Al-Torgoman for five days, and decide to
stay if satisfied, or return downtown if not.

Finally, prosecutor-General Hisham
Barakat is leading an investigation into the administrators of the Facebook
page "Popular Resistance Movement" because it allegedly "incites
against state institutions and calls for assaulting army and police
personnel". The police has arrested the page's administrator, a teacher
living in Qalioubiya, for posting slogans of the Muslim Brotherhood, and they
have confiscated his laptop. His brother has been arrested too. This
investigation follows restrictive measures enforced by the Egyptian police
after the Muslim Brotherhood was declared a terrorist organization after
Islamist president Mohamed Morsi was ousted last summer. Since then, hundreds
of his supporters and members of the Brotherhood have been killed and thousands
have been put into jail. In January, the Interior ministry has declared the
beginning of arrests of users and administrators of social media websites that
incite violence against the police or citizens; dozens of Brotherhood members
have been accused and arrested after the announcement.

Good news: Karima El-Serify, detained in
Qanater prison since mid-April, has been released by the Cairo Criminal Court
under "probation measures". Karima has been on hunger strike for 68
days, and this may be the main reason behind her release, according to one of
her friends. Karima was arrested and charged in espionage cases along with
other members of Morsy's presidential team. Moreover, as her mother has declared,
her arrest has been a way "to put pressure on her father, Ayman
Al-Serify" close associate of Morsy. Karima began her hunger strike after
"prison guards ordered cellmates to beat her and her colleagues and steal
their belongings". Hunger strike has been used as a protest tactic by
several prisoners currently detained in Egypt.

Monday, May 5, 2014

Secretary of State Kerry, and my old boss, Nabil Fahmy, now Egyptian Foreign Minister.

Things do not look so good in Egypt. The country has strayed fairly far from the goals of the Revolution, in my opinion. I am really hoping to go to Egypt some time in June.

Egypt is becoming increasingly dependent on financial inflows from the Gulf. Gulf Inflows (Cargnegie Endowment). This is a problem for several reasons. Egypt has traditionally been a relatively secular, politically moderate state, with a strong Sunni heritage, but a tolerance for multi-culturalism. The Gulf states, by contrast, particularly the wealthy Saudi Arabia tend to observe Wahabiism. Wahabis are much stricter, much more puritanical, and much more missionary than mainline Sunnis. (Compare evangelicals to Methodists for example) This financial dependency could push Egypt into a more radical position culturally, and a much less tolerant position.

Egypt tentatively has scheduled presidential elections in May. The IMF, according to Carnegie, has bought into the "restoration of democracy" narrative postulated by the Egyptian government. Personally, I do not see how a coup by the military doth democracy make. Here is a good quote.

There is also historic precedent for dealing with Egypt regardless of
its domestic political climate. The IMF dealt with former president
Hosni Mubarak as compensation for Egyptian support for coalition forces
during the First Gulf War, whose government by then had a less than
optimal record on human rights, civil governance, and transparency. The
g

eopolitical reasons for reengaging with Egypt today are equally
profound. Despite public censure, western actors—notably the United
States and European Union—by and large need Egypt to maintain pressure
on armed Islamist groups in the Sinai and to remain a buffer against the
larger destabilization of the region caused by the prolonged conflict
in Syria. Western actors also want Egypt to not seek rival sponsors,
such as Russia, whose recent arms agreement with Egypt buttresses speculation that Cairo is moving away from Washington.